[Hider=Augusta Laura Fiona Blue of Orenth][b]Name:[/b] Augusta Laura Fiona Blue of Orenth; prefers Gussie
[b]Age:[/b] 16
[b]Sex:[/b]  Female
[b]Breed:[/b] Human

[b]Appearance:[/b] Gussie’s build was sinewy muscle and sun kissed skin. Her hair was a  crown of red split ends and tangled locks that tumbled just past her neck. Mismatched green and gray eyes glimmered over high cheek bones and underneath a wide brow. She had the swagger of a frequent horseback rider and the callous covered palms of a farm hand. 

[b]Skills/Abilities:[/b][indent] 
- [b]Expert horseback rider[/b] 
- [b]Animal taming and empathy[/b] – Gussie grew up on a farm and is more at home atop a steed than anywhere else. She’s also had experience breaking in dogs and training wolves from pup age to guard the livestock and not eat them. 
- [b]Brawler & Blade Brander[/b] – Gussie grew up wrestling and pinning down pigs. And occasionally livestock. She’s been trained on the use of a sword but is undisciplined in the finer aspects.
- [b]Noble customs[/b] – her mother had great plans in store for Gussie and ensured she was tutored in court intrigue and etiquette. She knows of all her father’s subjects and the history and bloodlines and it’s all a bore to her.
- [b]Magical ability:[/b] [i]plucking at heartstrings[/i]. Gussie has inherited her mother’s innate magic that allowed her to seduce her father. But she doesn’t have the years of experience and fine crafting her mother did. She has received some tutoring but is now uncomfortably plateauing when such abilities could be useful. She can consciously interrogate and push others to speak truths and cajole them magically, but her current prowess is akin to the same inhibition-free state men feel after a bottle of wine. Magic-sensitive sorcerers feel an aura that they can’t quite place about her but most don’t decipher her power unless she actively pushes someone. The aura itself seems to sway those who can sense it to convince themselves Gussie is just that charismatic.
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[b]Equipment:[/b][indent]  
-  A tear-sized jewel strung on a gold chain she wears around her neck. It focuses her inborn magical manipulation of others around her and hones it to one wish her mother carved into the essence: Believe in Me. Gussie unknowingly manipulates those around her into twisting logic so that they align their goals with her own. The magical aura it radiates is shielded by her mother’s wards.
- Chainmail worn under black broiled leather armor.
- One bastard sword
- A dagger
- An assortment of pouches that are mostly empty.
- A snow-white fur cloak
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[b]History:[/b][indent]She was never meant to be born!

That’s the first memory Gussie can remember that her father had said about her. Fiona Blue had brought her daughter to court to look her father in the eye and have her legitimized. She still remembers that first meeting. Her father had the deep emerald hues of house Orenth. Gussie’s mismatched set looked back and blinked. Then he balked and accused her mother, “She was never meant to be born!” 

Her father and mother had a civilized argument about Gussie’s status. First, Stephen of Orenth offered to pay Gussie’s dowry and living expenses in exchange for her -quiet- departure from his life. Then he offered marriage to a respectable Arad vassal which would leave her illegitimate but well off. Towards the end he started to threaten mother. Gussie was never meant to be privy to this but her parents were terrible liars. They never did learn to lock their correspondence when they left her alone, either.

Fiona may well be descended from fishwives because, in the end, she bent then Prince Stephen of Orenth to recognize five-year-old Augusta as his legitimized heir before all his father’s vassals and the gods. After the introductions were all made Fiona spirited her daughter far away and had the capital in an uproar that never did settle.

She spent her interim years raising Gussie Blue in a quiet hamlet and had her play the part of farm girl. That was Fiona’s plan. It was Gussie’s childhood and she still considers herself more farm girl than anything. Her mother’s etiquette and magic lessons were a muted background to the sun and hard work and good ale. Even as her mother started to whisper about enemies and her future Gussie listened with all the attentiveness a teenager drunk on life can manage to their parent.

Her mother died of a common illness that sapped at her wits and then ate her from the inside out before she realized what had happened. She passed quietly in her sleep. If she had her memory when she died she would have laughed bitterly at the injustice of nature ruining her plans. Two months after her death and modest burial, Gussie was approached by an accountant executing her mother’s will. Her mother left a sizeable sum of gold, a letter to her daughter, and a ruby necklace— “family heirloom” she called it.

Gussie left the hamlet on horseback shortly after and found the news of her father’s death uninteresting. She was grooming horses for a band of minstrels going by “Beggars and Kings” when she heard that she had been married to Lord Arad’s youngest son. And that the minstrels she now worked for entertained and Augusta looked lovely with hair of gold and eyes of blue. Two weeks later she heard news that Augusta Laura Fiona Blue had renounced the throne and taken the vows with the Church of Issad and proclaimed that the other girl was an imposter. All this amused her to no end.

Then on a regular hot day, while performing for some minor lord in-between wars, the minstrel company of twenty or so musicians were rounded up. Augusta had been asked by the group to buy some fresh provisions and returned in time to see the inquisition from the gates of the castle. Turn by turn, each troubadour was asked about her. Not the fake ones running around proclaiming legitimacy—her. Tan and mismatched eyes and all. Turn by turn, each traveling companion she shared bread with feigned ignorance. Turn by turn, they were hanged.

Gussie road out from the young lord’s lands and into war-torn territory without realizing it. They wouldn’t stop using her name. The name was all they needed. The girl was a liability. She thought out her future that on that ride. It seemed to go on for as long as the road did. She could disappear. The world was big enough that she could vanish—even King’s daughters disappeared during war. But would she be safe? Could she live a life looking over her shoulder every day? The thoughts got her tangled and flustered right up until she ran into a Brenton loyalist advance scouting party. She was captured by them fully expecting to meet her death. 

She was instead locked in an elegant room befitting her station as high-asset breeding stock: a vanity stocked with more powders and perfumes than a brothel, a monstrous bed adorned with silk sheets, carpets, intricate drapes, and enough pillows to support a town's population in heads. She sulked for half a day before the castle was besieged and her guard was doubled. The castle was taken before the sun set. She heard the slaughter of her guard detail--every sundering of plate, severing of limb, crushed skull, and every scream.

The door was busted down and a small assortment of cloaked men brandished bloody orcish blades. The girl shut her eyes. A great beast's bellowing roar drowned out the cursing and screaming of men. Gussie heard the same sounds that dispatched her guards and stood trembling waiting for her life to end. A sticky hot stream of blood splashed over her face and she inhaled the scent of copper and men emptying their bowels. Gussie opened her eyes and saw her room was now decorated with the dismembered cloaked corpses. The stink overwhelmed her--she could taste their flesh and the blood puddles that had begun to collect.

Gussie fell to the ground, threw up what was left in her stomach, and fell unconscious in orcish arms. It was around sunset that her captors had changed.[/indent]

[b]Personality  and Psychological profile:[/b][indent]Gussie is more her father than she’ll ever know. His brash judgement and short temper were all passed down to her. This was tempered with her mother’s upbringing; patience and etiquette and paranoia were all instilled in her. To her dismay, she often hears her mother’s voice offering unwelcome judgement and counsel. What disturbs her is she sees reason in her mother's mistrust of anyone who wasn't her. Wearing the name Augusta has become a chore of breaking in a pair of new boots; painful, blistering, and constricting. Gussie finds her situation overwhelming whenever she stops to think about it. She focuses on the task and immediate mission at hand and decidedly ignores the throne on the horizon.[/indent]

[b]Relationships  and Acquaintances:[/b][indent]Augusta has a passing familiarization with the faces of nobility her father reigned over. She’s technically nobility and even royalty but seen as an outsider by most and, most positively, exotic by some.[/indent]
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